Is a #NeverTrumper who Refuses to Support Trump Backing Hillary by Default?

by John Hawkins | October 6, 2016 7:03 am

I received a question on Facebook: “Does being a Never Trumper mean tacitly supporting Hillary? Isn’t it a zero sum game, assuming no other candidate has a reasonable chance of winning? I’d love hear your thoughts on this John Hawkins and friends.”

Here’s my response.

If instead of “Freddy vs. Jason” the movie, it were “Freddy vs. Jason: The Race for the Presidency,” I wouldn’t feel compelled to support Jason because Freddy promised to import more illegal alien children to kill while Jason promised a 5% income tax cut once he hits the 500 hundred kids killed mark[1]

I think neither Trump nor Hillary is fit to be in the White House and I’m not voting for either. If anything, I’m nicer to Trump than he deserves because there are so many good people who support him and I really do hate to rain on their parade.

At the end of the day, most of the people who voted for Trump did so knowing that there was a certain percentage of conservatives who’d never vote for him, but who’d probably vote for just about anyone else (I wouldn’t have voted for Jeb either). They decided that didn’t matter. They also decided that his historically bad poll numbers, lack of a ground game, the fact that he wasn’t a conservative and his apparent inability to think anything that he doesn’t tweet wouldn’t hurt him. I think election day will prove that was a “10 out of 10” on the bad decision scale, but it’s the one a plurality of Republicans made. At this point, it is what it is.

All that being said, if you’re “supporting” Hillary, you’re encouraging people to vote for her or at least voting for her yourself. Most #nevertrumpers aren’t doing that. Personally, I slap Hillary around much more than I hammer Trump these days and no one who listens to what I’m saying would conclude she deserves his vote. I’d also add that it’s the responsibility of the candidate to win over the voters. If Trump is uniquely unsuited to do that with a portion of the GOP base, that made him a poor choice of a candidate.

Last but not least, I think most (but not all) of the obsession with #nevertrumpers at this point is from people who pushed Trump hard core, suspect he’s going to lose and want a scapegoat since every problem he has today was easy to see back in the primaries. Other than Jeb, pretty much everyone running would have beaten Hillary, but there were prominent conservatives who desperately wanted Trump anyway even though he was a huge long shot. They got their way. In November, we’re going to get to see whether their getting their way was a good thing or red carpet leading to the White House for Hillary Clinton.